Tomaszczyk Jennifer C, Fernandes Myra A, MacLeod Colin M
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2008 Feb;15(1):191-6. doi: 10.3758/pbr.15.1.191.
Some studies have suggested that older adults remember more positive than negative valence information, relative to younger adults, whereas other studies have reported no such difference. We tested whether differences in encoding instructions and in personal relevance could account for these inconsistencies. Younger and older adults were instructed either to passively view positive, negative, and neutral pictures or to actively categorize them by valence. On a subsequent incidental recall test, older adults recalled equal numbers of positive and negative pictures, whereas younger adults recalled negative pictures best. There was no effect of encoding instructions. Crucially, when the pictures were grouped into high and low personal relevance, a positivity bias emerged in older adults only for low-relevance pictures, suggesting that the personal relevance of pictures may be the factor underlying cross-study differences.
一些研究表明，与年轻人相比，老年人记住的正性效价信息比负性效价信息更多，而其他研究则报告不存在这种差异。我们测试了编码指令和个人相关性的差异是否可以解释这些不一致之处。我们指示年轻人和老年人要么被动观看正性、负性和中性图片，要么按效价对它们进行主动分类。在随后的偶然回忆测试中，老年人回忆起的正性和负性图片数量相等，而年轻人回忆负性图片的效果最佳。编码指令没有产生影响。至关重要的是，当图片被分为高个人相关性和低个人相关性两组时，只有低相关性图片在老年人中出现了正性偏差，这表明图片的个人相关性可能是跨研究差异的潜在因素。
